Survey System

Techneos upgrades SODA mobile survey service

Friday, June 25, 2010 by Samantha Singh

The new 1.3 version gives researchers access to information such as addresses, database lists or results from other surveys to be pre-populated and assigned to individual participants or interviewers for completion.

Researchers can also keep in contact with respondents through an email-style messaging system, and a data-cleaning option corrects any fieldwork errors at the source, rather than at the end of the project.

See the original post:
Techneos upgrades SODA mobile survey service

Click here, to see the Techneos press release: "Techneos Announces Version 1.3 of SODA®"

New Dynamic Data Tools for Market Research and Digital Ethnography

Monday, June 7, 2010 by Sean Conry

In a recent blog post I wondered about who was going to tackle the issue of new multi-faceted datasets that incorporate rich media like photos alongside traditional survey answers. Aside from the sheer overwhelming nature of these datasets, the industry is crying out for non-static dashboards and reports as opposed to the tried and true PowerPoint file & stacks of cross-tabs (this was driven home as a major theme at the recent CASRO technology conference).

At that conference I showed how we used Pivot by Microsoft to dig into quali-quant ethnographic data from a recent diary research pilot project. It’s very cool – I recommend checking it out. Microsoft is releasing a way to integrate Pivot “collections” as they’re calling them into Silverlight Websites! It’s a way to share meaningful data in a cool and informative way like I’ve never seen before. (p.s. a big thanks goes out to Candice at Luminosity for pointing me towards this…)

… And if you like that, check out SeaDragon, the underlying technology. This 6 minute overview from the TED site will blow your mind.

Lastly, it looks like there are some new players in this space in MR. I learned about Cognicient, a UK company that specializes in dynamic dashboards for longitudinal data.

Connect these tools to your survey system, and you may just tackle that data yet!

Tried and true technology for mobile research

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 by Mark Cameron

Being surrounded by new technology that ranges from mind-numbing to mind-blowing in news-worthiness, I find it refreshing to see a blast-from-the-past PDA emerging out of New Zealand...

I'm talking about a new handheld device from Aceeca which is ideal for many types of mobile research. Running on the rock solid and user-friendly Garnet OS (formerly Palm OS) and sporting an attractive 320 x 480 touchscreen, the PDA32 is an enterprise-grade US$199 handheld that pairs nicely with Entryware software to provide solutions for face-to-face interviewing and quantitative diary studies.

With optional WiFi and the ability to support multi-byte characters using third-party font overlays, this device is a welcome sight for those looking for a globally available survey appliance. Aceeca has chosen to fill in a niche that Palm vacated when it put all of its eggs in its webOS basket last year. I really like the folks over at Aceeca, who have been quietly making rugged handheld devices for the past decade. Aceeca has established a reputation for quality products and friendly service. Just as important, their focus on enterprise customers gives them a long-term view of product availability (unlike most consumer devices, which suffer from a common technology disease called flavourofthemonthitis).

I recently saw a blog post attempting to compare this hardware to current consumer smartphones. But it missed the whole point of the Aceeca release, which is to provide consistent and proven enterprise-grade technology that can be reliably deployed for a wide range of vertical market applications.

Having appreciated the simple and clean Garnet OS interface for well over a decade, I for one am very happy to see a great little Operating System kept alive and well.

Mobile Research Concepts in Practice

Monday, March 15, 2010 by Sean Conry

The basics might seem obvious... The inherent benefits of mobile diaries & digital ethnographies, as well as other mobile research techniques delivered via mobile applications include:

1. Augment traditional survey questionnaires with photos and locations to enrich data and drive new insights
2. Greater mobility means a higher likelihood that respondents will have the ability to take a survey anytime, anywhere
3. Time & location stamps give higher confidence that data was entered where and when it was supposed to/reported to be
4. Real-time data allows for compliance monitoring
5. Eliminate the problem of recall

But a lot of research practices, even those departments which are "ad-hoc" by definition, are built around creating an operational expertise which is replicated over and over again to collect market research data for various clients and scenarios. So sometimes we like to share specific examples to help people understand where a new technique might be useful...

Scenarios which can benefit significantly from a mobile survey system include:

· Detailed Category Interaction (diary studies)– EG. Snacking/Eating:

o Where and when did you eat? Why did you choose what you did? What options were available? How did you feel? Show us what you bought/made?

· Consumption/Usage that happens anywhere, or where location affects choice:

o FMCG, or disposable consumer goods

o Tobacco & Alcohol (typically done in academic or social research settings)

o Diapers

· Understanding a day/week/month in the life of a respondent segment:

o GPS capture for significant insight in to patterns

· Shopping/Retail:

o Exercises to create outfits, or understand how segments choose where to buy different articles of clothes

o Pseudo-mystery shopping (audit retail vendor knowledge or Sales Rep attention to customer)

· Medical:

o Physician Drug rep encounters

o Prescription/consumption and results of regulated products

· Exploratory & Innovation. Perhaps most valuable for dynamic, important or changing segments:

o New parents, Brand Mavens, Primary Grocery Shoppers, Baby Boomers

· Advertising and Media Exposure:

o Where & when did you see advertising? Show us the ad. How did it affect you?

· Mobile populations, or users of a product or service that by definition is mobile:

o Frequent fliers / Airline V.I.P.’s

o Commuters /Heavy Transit Users

o Sales/Service Reps

Making sense of the mobile platform jungle

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Mark Cameron

I've been getting very close to most of the mobile platforms on the market today, and wanting to summarize my thoughts about their potential impact on mobile research. Seeing Samantha's February 25th post about smartphone market share, a brain-dump on the subject should dovetail nicely...

Looking back on key announcements over the past year, Google, Apple and more recently Microsoft have made the most significant splashes in terms of mobile innovation. However, when the dust settles we still see Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM) leading the charge with 47% and 20%, respectively, of the mobile OS market in 2009. Why is this the case, and what can we expect to see moving forward?

I believe the current mobile market is a race between 5 horses, but I will not count others out over the long term due to the still-early nature of this arena. The key players today are:

Apple: since its release, the iPhone has set the bar for smartphone usability; its slightly thinner sibling, the iPod touch, is the definition of a sleek, modern Personal Digital Assistant (PDA); and the forthcoming iPad is one of the most anticipated products of all time. Simply put, Apple has a lot of swagger and momentum in the mobile space. But Apple runs a very closed environment that people either love or hate, and this creates opportunities for other more open platforms to shine. Also, while Apple has done very well in the consumer space, it has made fewer inroads into the enterprise, where RIM and Microsoft thrive.

Research in Motion (RIM): the BlackBerry is one of the most impressive brands of our time. While RIM is often considered less marketing savvy than Apple, I would suggest that their marketing tactics have been every bit as effective as Apple's -- just different. Despite a barrage of criticism about the sexiness and usability of their products, RIM continues to grow and profit at an astounding rate. I personally questioned the usability of BlackBerry products compared to more elegant competitors like iPhone and Android, but I have come to appreciate them as solid, enterprise-worthy devices, and to see the company as a very savvy player in the mobile space. RIM has developed very deep roots with both wireless carriers and enterprise IT departments, as well as a powerful brand that is almost synonymous with thumb-typing on a mobile phone.

Nokia: the Nokia/Symbian world is complicated. Having personally handled dozens of Nokia phones, I would summarize that their strength is in their diversity of offerings to multiple levels of the marketplace. This is also their weakness. With countless products, three current operating systems, and a solid-but-aging feel on much of their hardware, it is hard to believe that Nokia still outsells its nearest smartphone competitor at more than a 2-to-1 ratio. But while they are not as strong in North America, Nokia is a major player in Europe and downright dominant in many other regions of the world. It is hard to discount a company that produces over 1 million phones per day (yes, you read that correctly). With the incredible depth of carrier relationships and distribution channels which they have developed, Nokia's challenge now is to fill those channels with products that compete with their ever-growing range of competitors.

Google: Google has garnered a lot of attention since announcing the open-source (and freely available) Android platform in 2007. By providing a smartphone operating system that is free and extensible, Android has garnered support from dozens of handset manufacturers including major players like Motorola and HTC. In contrast to Apple, Google's greatest strength (and weakness) is its openness. I am personally very impressed with most of the Android devices I have used, and as a consumer I have great optimism that Android will be a force to be reckoned with in mobile technology. But I also recognize that openness can lead to fragmentation, and I've heard a lot of grumbling from developers about the lack of standards on Android devices. As Microsoft learned when it allowed device manufacturers and wireless carriers to customize experiences based on its Windows Mobile platforms, I believe that the many emerging flavours of Android devices will make it difficult for developers to target. That said, I believe that Google's ability to integrate the mobile experience with all of their other web-based services will make it a formidable player in the mobile space, and I believe the fragmentation issue can be overcome as Google and other Android licensees learn to coexist.

Windows Mobile: I recently spoke about the forthcoming Windows 7 Phone Series, so I won't repeat myself on the details. Suffice to say that I think Microsoft has re-entered the mobile race, and demonstrated that they are not planning to turn away from this increasingly important battlefield. Microsoft has learned a lot of lessons over more than a decade in mobile computing, and I believe their enterprise roots will serve them well as they re-assert themselves with a brand new mobile platform. What remains to be seen is whether Microsoft can garner enough consumer interest to unseat competitors in the mass market, or whether it will continue to play a more niche role as an enterprise solution.

I have not even mentioned the likes of Palm (webOS), Samsung (bada), Linux Mobile (LiMo), or expanded on the now open-source Symbian OS (the Nokia-bred OS that was recently spun off as a freely available platform). And there are others... but the rabbit hole is simply too deep to cover here, so I will get back to the purpose of my post: to discuss the impact of mobile platform trends on market research.

There are fundamentally two ways to engage people on their mobile devices in a data-intensive way: (1) via their web browser; and (2) using a downloadable application.

Mobile web browsers are improving in capability and usability, and are finally emerging as a lowest-common-denominator approach to mobile engagement. If you need to reach a lot of people in a relatively shallow way, e.g. to conduct a brief mobile survey about a product or experience, then a mobile browser may well be the way to go. Although mobile browsers are still fragmented, the emergence of mobile web technologies such as HTML 5, JavaScript, CSS and Adobe Flash are making it more viable to reach a wide mobile audience.

Downloadable applications provide a richer user experience for applications such as diary studies and mobile panels, but they are typically harder to deploy to a broad range of users. Also dovetailing with Sean's recent post about quality over quantity, I would argue that in many cases a more select audience that is highly engaged is more valuable than a broad audience that is minimally engaged. It is these cases -- for example digital ethnography with alarms to trigger highly contextual questions at random times -- where mobile apps really shine.

Bear with me as I attempt to tie all of this information together...

The mobile jungle is in some ways becoming more wild every day, but I am also seeing signs that a handful of gorillas may be starting to establish some turf. While I don't believe that all five gorillas outlined here will win over the long term, each one represents sufficient market share and resources to be considered as key players for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, I think we will begin to see some stabilization of mobile platforms, resulting in more reliable ways to reach the masses via both web browsers and downloadable applications.

For the next while solutions focused on mobile research will have to choose between "wide and shallow" or "narrow and deep" -- i.e. either focus on reaching a broad range of people with a more basic level of engagement, or on providing a high level of engagement within a more narrow scope of users. I don't feel that one is inherently better than the other, and both represent significant opportunities within the burgeoning mobile research space.

Over the long term the two paths that I have identified will converge. In the meantime, having invested a lot of time and energy developing methods to engage people in a deep and meaningful way, I am a big believer in the power of rich mobile applications. With over 3 Billion application downloads in less than 18 months, Apple has more than proven the viability of downloadable apps, and all other major platforms have since poured significant resources into their own mobile app stores.

Over the next while it is prudent to focus on the five key players I have identified here: Apple, RIM, Nokia, Google and Microsoft. But peripheral vision is often what sets the great apart from the good, so I allow my eyes to wander a bit in search of innovative smaller players that might just have a thing or two to teach the gorillas.

The Frustration of Mobility and Reach

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 by Sean Conry

In my last post, I wondered about device market share and it's affect on our ability to reach the right people for survey conducting.

I focused on the manufacturer / operating system, but another element also has a significant affect on reach. I guess you could call it Mode. We normally talk about mode in terms of whether we're collecting data over the web, over the phone, face-to-face, etc. Mobile is it's own mode, but there are choices within that mode.

Specifically, the primary mobile mode possibilities for a mobile survey system are text message, mobile web, and applications.

Check out this interview/podcast from a recent interview at a CASRO event. Heidi Dickert has some good points about how a different type of technology is required when looking at mobile surveys. The message? You can't just replicate the same old approach when it comes to mobile research.

Text messages give you ubiquitous reach, but the commonly held experience among those I speak with is that SMS surveys are good only for very, very quick polls. The burden on the respondent is high, and you can only squeeze in 3-4 questions before participation drops off - and if you haven't seen it yourself, believe me, it doesn't just stumble off the curb, it careens off the grand canyon.

Mobile web feels like it should be familiar since CAWI has taken over as the primary mode of choice in so many countries. However, the problem is that the mobile web isn't great yet for the vast majority of users. You still need a lot of patience. Think about a news page that requires 10 seconds to load, but then you spend 5 minutes reading. That's much more palatable when compared to refreshing screen after screen after screen of a mobile web survey. To reinforce this, check out Mobile Marketer's recent article about slow load time is the #1 performance issue on the mobile web.

Off course we believe in Applications (particularly Java where possible, native where needed). With iPhone App store just reaching it's 2 Billionth download in September, and Facebook's install base leaping from 2 million to 10.5 million in two months with the release of targeted Java versions, the path seems pretty clear to us...

The latest on mobile market share - coverage & reach

Monday, October 19, 2009 by Sean Conry

The two main considerations in picking a mobile research methodology are capability (what kind of work am I enabled to do?) and coverage (who can I reach with that capability?). Those of us in research care so much about market share of mobile devices because it profoundly affects both elements.

We need to reach people. But it's not just any people we need - we need to reach the right people. A colleague of mine recently held a focus group and noted - "hey - there are an awful lot of artists and musicians in this group..." Did his recruiter get the mix of participants right? Maybe, but probably not (you'd think so too, if I told you the category

).

To a marketer, the more people you can reach, the more mindshare you can gain with your ads to promote revenue growth. Marketers talk about how to reach a target market with their message because they need to know they are spending their money wisely. However, the reason researchers care about the number of people who see our "message" (say, a survey invitation), is because of our sampling frame. We need the right people to provide us with feedback in order to help solve the business problem at hand.

In short, researchers have to worry about it even more because the science of our analytics depends on it. Without reach, my colleague wouldn't even have had artists and musicians to talk to.

So, it's very interesting to see what Gartner is predicting for the future of Mobile OS market share. They say Android will overtake Research In Motion’s BlackBerry OS, the iPhone OS and Windows Mobile to capture 14.5% of the smartphone market within three years.

"Symbian’s market share will fall from around half of the global market to just 39%, according to Gartner. Apple will maintain its third place and Windows Mobile will stay in fourth. However, RIM’s BlackBerry OS will fall from second place to fifth,"

If you're thinking about partnering with a survey system supplier to provide cellphone survey capabilities, then make sure they have an expertise and plan in place to meet all of the different flavours of these platforms as they explode in the next two years, otherwise you may never overcome the problem of reach.

Market Research makes it in Hollywood

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 by Sean Conry

For many outside of our industry, Market Research has always been a fuzzy concept, and let's face it, a weird choice of career.

But no longer! A major Hollywood movie (Last Chance Harvey) features a market researcher as a main character.

Last chance Harvey Interviewer Screen capture

But what is she doing with pen and paper? What an antiquated approach! We would expect her to be using a computer assisted personal interviewing system or some kind of PDA survey software, of course. Where are these movie script writers doing their research?

Legal Note: This post in no way confirms that my wife convinced me to watch a movie which could be described as a Romance Drama.

A sum of parts: a quick review of what we've added since Entryware 6.0

Thursday, July 9, 2009 by Mark Cameron

Today marks the release of our latest mobile survey system, Entryware 6.4. While it carries the numbering of an "incremental" upgrade, it is a significant milestone in terms of the new capabilities that it provides. We chose to release it as v6.4 to focus on increasing capabilities rather than going through the onerous task of re-labelling this as a "major" release, but the impact is indeed major!

Entryware 6.4 brings diary research, including the rich photo diary capabilities enjoyed by some of our key customers on Palm devices today, to Windows Mobile users. It also provides some significant improvements to the look-and-feel of Entryware on both Palm and Windows Mobile devices, which improves usability for both face-to-face interviewing and self-completed surveys.

For those who are in the field every day working on a handheld device, using the 5-way navigator to page through long questions or proceed to the next question can significantly improve efficiency. And for those respondents who are just being introduced to mobile survey technology, automation to auto-start projects eliminates unnecessary steps for the user while providing added security for project managers.

I took a look at our release notes today and realized that since our last "major" upgrade, Entryware 6.0, we have added a number of key features in the various v6.x upgrades we have posted:

Sliding scale questions
Photo capture on Palm OS, Windows and Windows Mobile
Encrypted and compressed data transfer
SPSS v13+ export
Improved user-selectable missing
Ability to launch external Windows Mobile applications
Improved CSS formatting on Entryware Mobile for Windows
Improved string handling in scripting
Additional African language support
Support for Palm Pre devices
5-way navigation
Improved searching capabilities in Data View Report
Project automation to auto-start questionnaires
Improved graphics quality including hi-res Windows Mobile screens
Diary survey engine for Windows Mobile
Printing capability for Bluetooth printers
Ability to convert Multiple Response questions to a series of Single Response questions
Various other small enhancements

And that doesn't even touch on everything that was new in v6.0... this is just what has happened since then.

I thought is was worth sharing all of the key v6.x enhancements in one combined list, because many people are unaware of everything that can be done using Entryware today. We find that many of our clients are still happily using older versions of the software, which is great to hear... but in some cases significant efficiency gains could be made by adopting the latest and greatest.

Wireless surveys coming to a Palm Pre near you...

Monday, June 8, 2009 by Mark Cameron

With the release of the much anticipated Palm Pre this past weekend, Entryware software is now available on one of the hottest devices on the planet. The Pre, which is the first smartphone launched running Palm's new webOS Operating System, is receiving rave reviews from the likes of Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal and David Pogue of the New York Times.

Techneos worked with Motion Apps to ensure that Entryware Version 6.3 survey software was one of a handful of applications certified at launch for use on the Classic Emulator, which runs Palm OS applications on webOS devices. Mobile surveys have never looked so good!

Also watch this space for more news about Entryware software. We have been hard at work making Entryware look and feel better than ever on a wide variety of Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices.

The wild west of mobile devices and the cellphone survey landscape

Thursday, April 30, 2009 by Sean Conry

I want to expand on my recent post about viability for wireless surveys on respondent devices...

People carry their mobile phone with them just about everywhere they go, and they increasingly view their mobile device as more than just a phone. The landscape is ripe for survey conducting anytime, anywhere, so why hasn't mobile market research completely blown up yet?

If you take the cost of wireless data out of the equation, then the answer largely lies with the vast array of devices on the market.

Compare the infrastructure question to telephone surveys. Every landline phone transmits voice - it's the main purpose of your home phone. You have decisions to make regarding your CATI software, RDD and sampling strategy. And getting people to pick up and stay on the line and talk to you is a problem, but when you place that call, the phone on the other side will work no matter what brand of phone is in use.

Now move to the Internet... On the web, you have respondents choosing to interact with you through Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and now Chrome. Your email invitation might get filtered out as SPAM, but there's a relatively small number of permutations that your survey software has to deal with when it serves up questions and answers on a computer screen.

Executing on a cellular survey provides a completely unique challenge. The number of devices, operating systems and even capability within a company's product line are staggering. Add to this that some users might only be able or willing to respond to you by SMS, not over the web, and it becomes clear that choice in the mobile marketplace is a problem.

Corporations don't develop with the notion that compatibility with their competitor is good. In the ever-changing world of mobile devices, they just want to get the next handset out, and get it out fast. Things don't always work as you'd expect...

I wish I could link to the source, but hearsay will have to do for now. At a recent wireless summit, a prominent panelist mentioned that when Transformers the Movie came out, they wanted the accompanying wireless app to work on every mobile device. It took 20,000 versions.

So which methodology do you choose if you want to reach respondents?

Do you go with a strategy that takes advantage of the iPhone, which

sold 3.8 million phones in the first quarter this year, or do you choose an application that has been customized to excel on a wide variety of devices, or do you go with SMS - something everyone can use, but limits your research options? It's a tough choice, because your sampling strategy needs to be considered in tandem with your method of data collection.

Will the market eventually show convergence, or will mobility follow the laws of entropy? Only time will tell...

Cellphone Survey for Mobile Market Research on Respondent Devices - Is it viable?

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 by Sean Conry

A recent post on this blog linked to some interesting stats:

Worldwide mobile phone penetration continues to climb at a break-neck pace, with 4.1 billion mobile subscribers at last count (that's a global penetration rate of 61.1 percent).
1.27 billion fixed line subscribers (18.9 percent global penetration)

In areas like North America where traditional telephone research is a hefty percentage of the data collection that gets done, researchers might have a heart attack for the implications on their sampling plans! It's tempting to think that maybe moving to cellphone survey are just around the corner to relieve our response rate woes!

Being at a company that specializes in wireless surveys, we're in a very exciting time. But I also have to have a dose of realism - Not all phones are created equal.

In this story about Smartphone viruses, I learned that Smartphones currently make up about five per cent of the total mobile market, and the most popular smartphone operating system, Symbian, has 64.3 per cent of the smartphone market (3.2 per cent of the entire mobile market).

The line between smartphones and feature phones is blurring with the

entry of WebOs, Android and the like. But have you ever browsed the mobile web on anything other than a Palm, Windows Mobile, iPhone or Blackberry? It's miserable. My Samsung SPH-a920 is awesome - I'd recommend it to anyone, as long as you don't brwose the mobile web.

Setting aside connectivity problems for a moment, and just thinking about the hardware people own, wide acceptance of a mobile phone survey via the mobile web is probably further away than we would like to admit. Perhaps survey applications, text msg surveys and IVR will be our best options for doing a cellular survey in the short to mid term.

Excitement builds about running surveys on the Palm Pre Smartphone

Friday, April 17, 2009 by Mark Cameron

As a follow-up to my previous post about the Palm Pre Smartphone, we are increasingly excited about bringing mobile research to this exciting new hardware platform. More news is emerging about the ability to run Palm OS applications on Pre devices--such as this Youtube video showing some flashy gaming examples, or this FAQ that provides more technical information about exactly what features are supported.

Planned for release in the US later this quarter, Entryware software running on the Palm Pre should be a great solution for mobile surveys. A beautiful screen, slide-out keyboard and both WiFi and 3G wireless options make the Pre an ideal device for conducting surveys in the field. And its multi-tasking operating system will enable researchers to get very creative with third-party applications.

The Pre's interface operates like a deck of cards, so you can run a questionnaire on one "card" while running other applications (e.g. videos or location-based services) on different cards. Palm's new Synergy communication infrastructure and built-in GPS system also open up innovative new ways to manage your interviewers, respondents, mystery shoppers, etc.

We plan to turn this amazing new platform into an ideal solution for mobile market research. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

Devices with promise for CAPI and MCAPI Wireless Surveys

Monday, April 13, 2009 by Sean Conry

I recently wrote a post about a client who asked me about Palm, Market share of mobile devices, and what device to choose for their PDA Survey Software. Hopefully that helped spur thoughts on the state of the market today, but what's in store for the devices researchers will choose for tomorrow's Mobile Research?

In September 2008, professor Randall Stross from San Jose State University did an interview with the CBC where he noted that devices are getting ever more capable.

"There's no question that Google sees the biggest opportunity for growth is mobile access to the internet. Phones are becoming ever more capable of performing the same work that we use our desktops for. There's a whole new category of phones now, beyond the smartphone, that is designed from the ground up to interact with web services"

There's no doubt in my mind that hardware is converging...

Regular laptops are on the decline, but take a look at the proliferation of Netbooks (or mini-PC's, as they are sometimes called). One client of ours just decided to go with the Dell, although some other clients are also using the Asus EEE with great success.

Netbooks don't have a touch screen, and you have to be aware that you might be buying the linux version, but you can't beat the price and battery life.

The UMPC (or ultra mobile PC) never quite took off with widespread appeal among consumers, but they

can make a great survey device. Samsung, the main player in this space, is coming out with the next iteration of their popular Q1 line. Our company used the first release in the Q1 line, and I have to say, it was pretty nice.
You can't get a durable touchscreen device running Windows for much less.

And of couse there is the highly anticipated Palm Pre... (read more about this in other posts on this blog).

I am personally excited to see the Touch Book by Always Innovating (even though you can't get it with Windows). I understand offering linux, but they came up with yet another operating system (Touchbook OS). Sigh.

What about Android, and LiMO (or Linux Mobile) the open-source mobile operating systems?

Choice is good for consumers, but at some point, the vast proliferation of operating systems and technology standards make it tougher for business users to decide what platform to standardize on.

The shining ray of light in the chaos of these mobile phone wars is the first hint of collaboration amongst the main competitors. It's a green initiative, but incredibly, at least 17 cell phone brands will be sharing the same universal charger by 2012. Of course Apple isn't going to cooperate, but they'll probably come up with their own way to solve the problem.

For researchers, it means you need to consider your mobile software and hardware in tandem. For more on this, Techneos has a great whitepaper I can recommend ;) - check out the last page for "10 tips"

Entryware on Palm Pre: mobile surveys never looked so sexy!

Thursday, April 2, 2009 by Mark Cameron

In January, Palm took the world by storm by announcing both its new webOS and the Pre smartphone, which have been touted by many as setting a new bar for mobile phone functionality. Planned for release sometime this quarter, the Pre has leapfrogged Palm from a once-prized but aging provider of PDAs and smartphones, to an innovative leader with the coolest mobile device to hit the market since the iPhone. With a new team of superstars at the helm (many of whom came from Apple), Palm's recent announcements have impressed techies and investors alike.

But the question we have all been asking for the past couple of months is... what is the future of Palm OS applications like Entryware?

Today we heard the news we've been waiting for... that Palm OS applications will be supported on Pre devices. We had reason to believe that some form of Palm OS support would be available on webOS devices, but we've been in a bit of a holding pattern awaiting confirmation.

Palm devices have always been ideal for survey research, because Palm OS offers a simple, elegant interface that is consistent and easy to use. Although Entryware software also runs very well on Windows devices, as long-time Palm fans we are thrilled to see that a whole new generation of Palm devices will continue to be turned into best-of-breed wireless survey systems.

Techneos is committed to ensuring customers a smooth transition from existing Palm devices to the next generation of webOS phones. In the meantime, existing Palm devices like the Centro, Treo and TX -- all of which are excellent tools for mobile research applications like face-to-face interviews, diary studies and mystery shopping -- should be available at bargain prices while Palm makes room for new inventory.

Good going Palm! We knew you had it in you...